Rebirthing
by Shadows of a Dream
Summary: Rue died. Her life bled slowly away into the dirt of the Arena, and she closed her eyes, awaiting heaven, holding on to the song of Katniss Everdeen. Now Rue re-awakens - as a bloodthirsty muttation. Rue's POV, canon sequel to "Blood on the Flowers". R&R!
1. Chapter I: Metamorphose

**Rebirthing**

_** Chapter I: Metamorphose**_

The first thing that registers in my mind is the thumping noise. It's a heavy beat that shudders through my whole body, echoing in my eardrums. The cadence continues steadily, keeping perfect time.

_Thump, thump, thump._

I was dead. I'm sure of it. I died. They killed me, the Careers – Marvel – he killed me.

_ Thump, thump, thump._

The pounding gets louder and louder.

Am I dreaming? I must be. Maybe I'm having a near-death experience. But this isn't a light at the end of a tunnel, or the striking gold of heaven's gates, or even the fiery pits of hell. Purgatory, perhaps?

_Thump, thump, thump._

Maybe this is simply nothingness. Perhaps I must travel through this void to reach the afterlife. I must be strong. It will end soon. It must, it has to! I can't bear to stay here forever, locked inside my dead body, drifting on soundless, violent seas…

In a feeble attempt to remain calm, I take a deep breath. The sound I hear is deep, almost guttural, like the snorting of a dragon as it rises from its cave.

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

Why can't I hear myself inhale? That harsh intake of oxygen isn't me. I try taking a second breath. All I can hear is the bestial rasping.

_Thump, thump, thump._

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

Maybe it was all a dream – the spear, the death, this empty, drifting horror – all of it a fantasy, blown about like smoke. I have to open my eyes, just open my eyes, and it will all vanish away…

I try to blink. I can't. Darkness seals my eyelids shut. It feels as though someone is pressing down on all my limbs, a massive hand shoving me down forever into the eternal abyss. I try to feel something, anything but the pressure. I can't. I'm not warm, nor am I cold. I'm not in pain, nor am I comfortable. I can't feel _anything_, and that alone is sufficient to terrify me.

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

_Thump, thump, thump._

I struggle against the choking fear, the nothingness, the hand grinding into my back, crushing, pushing, splintering me apart… I feel something. A figment of my imagination? No. I feel – pain – everywhere.

The inhuman thumping slows, breaking off sharply between beats. Each thump is fierce and hard.

_Thump._

Gasp. Snort.

_Thump. Thump._

Gasp.

_Thump._

Agony starts in my chest again, and I wonder if I'm being forced to die for the second time, made to appreciate each individual moment of the anguish. My lungs feel scalded, burned. My lungs are full of heat. I still can't make myself breathe, can't make myself move, but I feel my lungs expand of their own accord. They grow. Swelling. Bulging.

_Thump! Thump!_

Gasp.

_Thump!_

I feel my lungs strain against my ribcage, pink tissue expanding, scratching against my bones. I'm going to snap apart from the inside. Some animal is inside me, some parasite eating me away. Someone, do something. It's _inside_ me. It's killing me. It's killing me again!

Then my ribcage is screeching. Growing. Will my own bones tear me apart? The thumping becomes erratic, like a blaring siren.

_Thumpah-thump, thumpah-thumpah thump._

Gasp, gasp, gasp. Snort. Gasp.

My heart is expanding. Now my stomach, now my chest. My throat closes up for a moment, and my mind is swamped with panic, but then my throat expands. My whole body bulges, my skeleton distorts, squeezes out, stretching my muscles and ligaments and flesh.

_Thumpah-thumpah-thumpah._

Gasp, gasp, snort, gasp.

My whole body is burning, like I'm drowning in acid. Pinpoints of pain break out across my skin. I hear a wet, ripping, tearing sound. I feel warm all over, even apart from the anguish, as if someone has placed a fur coat over me.

The pinpoints of pain intensify. I want to scream and I can't. I want to plead with someone to make this end. Take me home. Take me to heaven. Take me away from this.

I try to recall Katniss' song, but all I hear is the harsh imitation of breathing, and the heartbeat. _Heartbeat. _Whose heartbeat?

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

The cycle of breathing and heart beating settles down. I hear something new. A man's voice. A voice with a strange accent – clipped words, hissed _S_'s, sick enthusiasm.

"Yes, yes, exactly as I envisioned! It is magnificent. But will it kill?"

A woman's voice, equally horrible, even more twisted, exclaims happily, "Of course it will. The girl's memory will be altered, and it will kill. It will kill with _relish_."

"Good," the man says.

I shriek as loud as I can inside my head. I still can't scream. Inside, I'm wailing.

What kind of nightmare is this?

I feel a stab of pain in my wrist, like a needle, stinging. Sleepiness seeps through my veins. I hear an array of medical sounds – beeps, whirrs, whistles, blaring alarms on surgical equipment. The heaviness increases beyond what I can take. I sigh and let death take me again. I can only hope it's finally over… Finally… finally…

The world fades.

Awareness drips away.

**A/N: **I'm probably going to continue this up to Rue's subsequent awakening as a muttation, which will ultimately transition to the final battle at the Cornucopia with Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Cato, and most importantly – Mutant Rue.

Please review. Please.

Constructive criticism is encouraged, but please refrain from flames.

May the odds be _ever _in your favor!


	2. Chapter II: Awakening

_**Chapter II: Awakening**_

__Nightmares are strange by nature, but these dreams make even less sense than usual. The visions keep coming for a while, a perpetual onslaught, overloading every one of my senses. They fly by like a highlight reel from a movie: snapshots of my life, and my fears, and my hopes for the future.

The golden starbursts of renewed strength. The bleak, bone-littered caverns of disappointment. The songs of a dawning sun. The suffocating failure.

The hopelessness. The power. The struggle.

I see it whipping past – all at once – as if the separate halves of my mind are warring for control. I feel it, I see it, I hear it, I smell it, I taste it. All of it. I think that this must finally be death, for real this time, because my life is flashing before my eyes. _Everything_. Like a mental scrapbook, flipping pages frantically.

_ The familiar, moist dirt beneath my bare feet._

_ Berries from the arena, sweet and potent on my tongue._

_Marvel, thrashing madly about like a dying dog in a puddle of his own blood._

_ My hollow, distant whimpers, fading away into burning cold emptiness._

_The icy wind, carrying the dry scent of tree bark._

_Thresh's name called at the reaping, and my subsequent scream that I can't control._

_ The deafening crack of wood as Marvel's spear drives into the trunk of my tree._

_The earthy scent of row upon immaculate row of grain in District 11's fields._

_The mockingjays, carrying the four notes of my signal._

_The warm fragrance of a thousand flowers in a thousand colors._

_ Rough, coarse bread, crunching between my teeth, stale as a stone._

_The spear buried in my chest, spilling out blood._

_ The painfully icy water of the river, protecting me from the tracker jacker attack._

_Cato, watching me at the Capitol like a predator tensing for the kill._

_ Bruises on my arms and legs from a fall in the Arena's woods._

_ The hearty stew of the Capitol, with chunks of fresh lamb and dried plumbs._

_The slow, impossibly agonizing, endless release from life as I slip away._

_Thresh, sauntering up the creaky wooden stairs to join me on the stage at the reaping._

_ Cool, clear liquid from my water skin, calming the ever-present ache in my throat._

_The agony of Marvel's spear driving into my stomach._

Amidst the thunderous hurricane of distinct clarity, I hear a continuous backdrop. The voices of the man and woman, saying things I don't understand – complex chemical names and surgical procedures and DNA science and mathematical formulas.

The mechanical sounds of some invisible equipment continue. I hear the heartbeat – _thump, thump, thump _– fading, then returning, then fading again, amplified by a speaker that I can't see.

I hear the breathing.

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

I hear an animalistic, howling, growling noise.

I hear a high, keening screech like nails on a blackboard.

I feel the anguish in waves, and I start to recognize that it's occurring at a semi-regular interval, occasionally spiking without warning. My chest hurts worse, but I can't feel the spear in it. It feels like an angry hand is squeezing my heart, forcing it to keep beating.

The visions grow worse. I'm forgetting what's real, seeing every fear I've ever had, only dramatized. My family, Katniss, Thresh... they're dying. I'm bleeding in the Arena, forever in pain, forever alone, forever trapped with a scream stuck in my throat and tears caught in my eyes and a spear wedged in my chest.

Then, gradually, it fades.

It pales. I'm seeing only in black and white.

Who am I?

What happened to me?

Where am I?

Why am I losing my grip on reality?

Why won't anybody help me?

_Thump –_

_Thump –_

_Thump –_

...Gasp...

...Snort...

...Gasp...

An infinite period of everything and nothing.

I feel something, like a body, like limbs, but not like mine. Like something else, as if my soul has been dropped into another person. I feel the pain dissolve away. I feel energy shudder through my veins.

I can see. I'm alive again.

I can see.

There's a low, rumbling moan.

And I open my eyes.

**A/N: **Thanks to my two reviewers. To those of you who subscribed and/or favorited this story – I really appreciate it, but if you have the time, would you please review? Your constructive criticism and feedback would mean the world to me.

I'm having a blast with this. R&R, and may the odds be _ever _in your favor!


	3. Chapter III: Static Existence

_**Chapter III: Static Existence**_

Reality comes slowly, as if through a funnel, widening in its clarity as I swim up and cut a smooth path through the choppy, tossing waves of blood and darkness and heat and pain and cold. My awareness widens in its scope and focus as I scramble to the top of the tornado.

I have to hold on. I have to.

Every nerve in my body – my unfamiliar, unnatural, too big, too warm body – implores me to sink back under. Close my eyes again. Let the blackness seal them shut. Drift down, down, down into the safe, numb, empty solace I've been hiding in for so long...

I fight it. It takes all my strength to resist it, but I do. I blink and let reality come back into focus. Visions dance in front of my eyes, like dust being shaken off of long-dormant memories, falling in grey sheets across my vision.

The images drift by, crashing like fresh waves over me. I grit my teeth and snap my eyes shut, but it doesn't help. I can still hear the heartbeat, quickening with my stress.

_Thumpah-thumpah-thumpah..._

The breathing is still here, too. Like some machine, artificial and strained.

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

I almost scream as the memory of the reaping flashes by. No one to volunteer for me. No one who cares. A crowd without applause, making a collective sigh because I'm young and typical, and it'll be boring to watch me die.

Thresh stepping up, silent and confident, and looking at me as if to say, _I'm not going to let you die._

But I did. _I did._

Who killed me?

I remember... pain. A weapon inside me. Bleeding. Screaming. Praying for it to stop...

Memories _hurt_. I want to drown them, to seize them and crush them with my bare hands. Maybe this is why so many of the victors who actually survive end up ill. Addicted to morphling or alcohol.

I once heard that 12's last surviving victor, the one from the Second Quarter Quell – Haymitch Abernathy – still shrieks and rails at the Hunger Games in his sleep every now and then.

I resist. I will not break. I will not surrender.

Time ticks by. I can hear Claudius Templesmith counting down the seconds. _Welcome to the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..._

Make it end. Make it stop.

I listen to the heartbeat.

Time passes. After a small eternity, I seem to have broken free. Numbing weight no longer restrains me. The memories have withdrawn, but at the back of my mind I still feel the sharp point of a blade tearing me open, still hear Cato's cold, feral laughter.

Reason gradually returns to me, dawning like the golden disc of the sun over the fields of District 11.

I'm in a small, square room, alone. There is no furniture. The only light comes from two rows of dim, dusty florescent tubes overhead and a single window that's locked with the blinds half-open, sending jagged shafts of sunlight against the white wall. The paint is new, but the air is old and stale.

I breathe deeply. It doesn't hurt, but it feels... wrong. I feel my lungs expand and contract with an unfamiliar, heavy, heaving motion. Inhaling stings my nose and the back of my throat as a pungent medley of sharp, potent stenches stabs my chest.

The air smells like acids, medicines, and chemicals. I'm impressed by how many I can distinguish. Antiseptic. Morphling. Sedative. Blood. Tracker jacker venom.

And a mixture of everything else that I can't name, burning me with every harsh inhale and exhale.

Save for the reeking medical air, nothing hurts. I feel stiff, and perhaps a bit tired, but young and strong. Strong enough to break out of whatever freak show I've found my way into. I can fight my way out. Go home. Tell my family I'm alive and well...

I can't remember them right. Part of me is expecting to see a happy mother, a proud father, a relieved crowd of siblings, in my mind's eye. But something strikes the memory, or fantasy, or whatever this image is. It shatters into a thousand broken shards like it's been hit by a hammer.

A mental blow crumples me to the rock-hard, ice-cold floor. My bones dissolve into liquid, my heart pounds - if it is my heart making that unnatural rhythm - _thump, thumpah, thump_ - and I can't breathe.

Gasp. Snort. Gasp.

And I see everything.

They're dead. All of them. Pale and limp and cold, lying unresponsive in the blood-soaked dirt of the fields. Their mouths are still open in screams that will never end. My mother is curled into a fetal position, her frozen fingers tightly clutching a rod that protrudes from her T-shirt. Sprawled out on the crimson ground. With an arrow, an arrow, buried in her chest.

It killed her. She's dead. The arrow killed her.

What Peacekeeper carries a bow? What Gamemaker? What Capitol enforcer? Unless, unless -

Unless it wasn't the Capitol at all.

Another memory hits me with all the force of a moving train. The sharp metal point of a weapon driving into my stomach, crushing me to the dirt, leaving me bleeding in an inescapable mesh of netting. I'm dying. Trying to remember how to inhale. How to move. How to scream.

I remember. I remember...

The face of the female tribute from District 12, her long, auburn hair braided down her back, her empty gray eyes watching me die. _Katniss Everdeen._ Her name flashes across my mind's eye like the faces of the dead in the skies of the Arena.

Katniss Everdeen.Hanging over me like a ravenous vulture.

She had the bow, she was supposed to be my ally, and she shot me, impaled me, stood by the whole awful, endless time to make sure I passed on in pain. She played with my hair, toying with me. Almost crushing the bones of my hand with her triumphant squeeze, just to watch my expression twist and contort with anguish.

She taunted me. Sang about home, about hope, about a meadow I'd never see.

_In the meadow, under the willow..._

_A bed of grass, a soft green pillow..._

She stood over me until, until, until -

My memory goes blank like a television shutting down. I'm panting. No. This can't have happened. It can't have. It can't! My heartbeat is so loud it pulsates in my ears.

I open my mouth to shriek, and a long, mournful wolf's howl sounds out.

I'm losing my mind. I'm going insane. What's going to happen to me? Have I already gone over the edge? Are the walls actually closing in on me, or am I hallucinating?

I stare down at the tiled floor to calm myself, but my vision swims, my throat hurts, and all I see is a pair of massive, furry paws, claws extended like switchblades. I back away, slam into the wall in manic fear. The paws move with me. I'm breaking from self-control now - charging into walls, raking the metal door with my claws, howling and yowling and growling, head-butting the window.

_Get me out of here. Get me out. Get me out!_

I try in vain to yell for help. All I hear is a stream of shrill, canine yipping. I open my jaw to bite like an animal, letting my huge, shining fangs tear uselessly at the metal door, at the baseboards, at the lock on the window, at the tiles forming the floor.

Then voices. One male. One female. Close.

"It's awake."

"Hurry! It may be in shock, yet. It may need to be calmed."

"Come on, then!"

I'm tearing at the threshold at the door so hard, blood is seeping beneath my claws, through my fur. I throw up my head and howl again.

Frantic footsteps sound in the hall.

I want to go home. No, not home, not back to, to, to - I resist the agonizing flashback. Can't go back. Can't see their bodies, strewn about the field, beaten and bloodied...

In the next second, a man crashes through the door in my room. He has a ghostly face, pale skin that you can see all the veins through, dark circles under his eyes. His gray hair is thrown about in every conceivable direction. His white lab coat is too long for his short body, and he nearly tumbles over his own feet in his haste to get through the doorway.

A woman pursues him in earnest. Her strawberry blond hair is in a simple bun. Her face might have been beautiful once, but it's hard to tell through the gold eyeliner, overdone blush, cherry red lipstick, and surgically altered features. Her face is so flawless it's nightmarish.

"Doctor," she gasps, "sir, please... Its condition may not be stable, sir..."

I look to the man. He seems to be the one in control. He raises a latex-gloved hand for silence.

_Can you help me?_ I try to say, but I only whimper. Like the day in the arena. Shot with an arrow. Whimpering.

"Hello, Rue," the man says, calm and clipped. "Don't be afraid. We're your friends. It's Katniss who wants to hurt you, but I promise you she's far away now. You're safe. Don't be afraid. Katniss is gone. She's gone, Rue. We're only trying to help you."

_Katniss. _

_Everdeen._

The voices of my captors become a backdrop to her name as it bounces around the inside of my skull.

Suddenly, no one is themselves. I'm not me – I'm furious, raging, some kind of bestial, instinct-driven thing, wanting just to kill her. To kill Katniss. To rip her archer's arms from their sockets and take her arrows in my teeth and impale her with them.

I'm not even here. I can see the trees all around me, smell the foliage, feel my slingshot in my human hand that's really a paw, now, somehow. And Katniss is beside me, watching me die. Watching me beg her to end this. And smiling.

All I see in the expression of the perfectly hideous, Capitol doctor woman before me is sadistic bliss as I bleed to death from her arrow.

I'm lunging for her before I have time to think.

**A/N: **I just finished Mockingjay, so I incorporated the concept of hi-jacking into this with the reference to tracker jacker venom. I won't spoil what that is for those who haven't made it to book three. Please realize that Rue is losing her sanity by this point, so her memories are merely constructs made by the Capitol.

There are references in books 1 and 2 of THG to the fact that the mutts weren't really the dead tributes, as far as Katniss knows. However, this is not proven, so I'm not breaking canon.

I'm having so much fun with this!

Thanks so much to those who reviewed. Oh, and Whistlewind Wolf – I weighed your two suggestions against each other, and I know, I chose the one you liked the least. I just thought that would make more sense for a hi-jacking situation. Easier to manipulate Rue into thinking Katniss killed her than to make her borderline insane because Katniss didn't save her life. Not that the other option was bad. Just not my personal preference.

Thanks everyone, and R & R!


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